


3 times Tom doesn't know what he is, and 1 time he does

by inverseR



Series: (The Beatitudes) Matthew 5:3 - 5:10 [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Muggle, Angst, M/M, Pre-Slash, The Magnus Archives is essentially a template for suffering, blaspheme, buzzfeed unsolved au, the only plot device I know is making my characters suffer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:34:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23669986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inverseR/pseuds/inverseR
Summary: The waiting in Tom is hungry.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle | Voldemort
Series: (The Beatitudes) Matthew 5:3 - 5:10 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1704340
Comments: 9
Kudos: 48





	1. Matthew 5:5

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the Earth

_The Extinction, The Spiral_

Tom was still quite small when he cannot remember if he was human or not.

The other children in the orphanage stared at him oddly, pointed to him with an accusation and words that Tom could hear, did not want to understand, would not remember as the days go on. The matrons of the orphanage listened to the children’s complaints, watched Tom with a look in their eyes like they _know_ what the otherness in him is.

But Tom was happy in the orphanage. It was an oasis jutting out perilously into the coast, there is a barren land of green where there wasn’t raging ocean and it sometimes seemed as if the nearest village was closer than it really was, or maybe that was the forest – maybe sometimes the trees marched up the small hill to talk to the matrons and the children about a god that nailed his own son down into crosses.

If you gave Tom a map and told him to stab a pin where the orphanage was, Tom couldn’t do it. If you told him to bring you there, he would just drive around in circles and shrug when you ended up in nowhere, everywhere.

The nowhere-ness of the orphanage suited Tom just fine, and when the children threw rocks at him or ignored him, he went out and found snakes to talk to. The snakes nearby had the most fascinating patterns, layers upon layers of interlocking isometric shapes that made them look not like what they are. Tom understood the not-language they spoke, and hissed back.

Tom loved the orphanage. Not the children and the people in it, but everything else about it was lovely. The no-sense of it fed his childish wonder and kept the looming _waiting_ in him at bay.

He wasn’t sure what the waiting was for.

One day, the matrons brought in this table. It had the same interlocking patterns as the snakes nearby, but none of the neat isometric dimensionality. The pattern of the table trailed in some kind of mind-bending entanglement that defied explanation with _malice._

Tom hated the table.

Or the table hated him, or the waiting thing in Tom hated the table, it is hard to be sure.

The matrons began using the table in the dining room, making sure everyone sat at it as they ate. Tom was quite sure that no one ate anything when they at the table, and that the endeavour was just to stare at the table.

Tom was not sure why he hated the table, but he did. He looks at the table, and everything in him _screamed_ to break the table into pieces and pieces and pieces. He wanted to light the varnish on fire, rip apart every fibre of the wood and ground it further down and let the coastal winds scatter the pieces, or let the ocean take it, the salinity of it wear it down and no one will ever remember it.

Whenever Tom moved to leave the table, the matrons made sure he stayed near it, even as he snarled at the table, wanting to _bite_ to take a chunk out of it, and then another, and then another, until there is no more of the table.

The waiting in Tom is _hungry_.

Sometimes, the rug would come to watch them sit at the table. Tom thinks it was curious. The rug normally sat in front of the fireplace by the drawing room, but sometimes it liked to crawl up into the walls, curl itself around curved surfaces and _shift_ in amusement. The heavy down of the rug didn’t move, of course, it’s a _rug_. What moved was the pattern, it shifted across the walls, stretching wide wide wide like it was pretending to be a wallpaper, and when it caught someone staring, it shifted again.

The rug was like the snake language made visual, Tom thought.

The rug wouldn’t go near the table, it would crawl warily across the walls, the parquet. It would twist itself around the trellised embellishments on the corner of the ceiling, shift warily across the room as it took in the table.

It knew Tom was looking at it, and sometimes, it looked back at Tom too.

One day, while out talking with the snakes, a man appeared, he was dressed all in black, and he smiled at Tom in a way that the matrons never did. “What’s your name?” the man asked. “I’m from the diocese nearby. You’re from 105 Hill Top Road, right? How are you?”

Tom looked at the man, and the snake he had been talking to coils around his arm and shoulder, draping impossibly long over his back – _I am going to lie_ , Tom thought, and the snake hissed its approval. “Tom,” Tom told the man.

“My name is Tom Riddle.” He added cheekily. “I live in the orphanage.”

“Are you happy in the orphanage?” the man asked kindly. “You’re the only boy I see running around outside of it.”

The waiting in Tom is hungry, it is _so, so_ hungry.

The snake on Tom coiled around him tighter, and Tom’s breath was cut off, but that’s fine. The man looked worried, and the waiting in Tom said: _Oh?_

The waiting wants to eat, so Tom told the man: “I am so, so happy in the orphanage,” and smiled extra wide for the man. The snake was still coiled around Tom, but when he leaned closer to the man, it slithered off to drape itself around the man’s shoulders.

Tom whispered in the man’s ear.


	2. Matthew 5:7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What if they wake up in the dark of night and find some nocturnal creature that eats death staring back at them with beady eyes?   
> What happens next? What happens next?   
> If all these insectoids can eat a building and everything in it in a month – and nothing can stop them, then where to next?

The waiting in Tom is _starving_ , it has not fed in so long. In between working for Buzzfeed, Tom has neglected to feed it.

There is something in hollow in the pit of his ribs and for a moment, Tom wonders if he could reach into himself, and realise the waiting has eaten away his internal organs. He had flipped through an anatomy book before, tested the theories and witnessed the diagrams of physiology in flesh and blood – he does not know if the same laws that govern human bodies apply to him too.

Sometimes the waiting is Tom and Tom is the waiting and the waiting is _starved_.

And then Harry clasps his shoulder and asks him out for a bite, bounce some theories off of him, tell him this story or that about a haunting or some other conspiracy theory – and he is Tom again, and the waiting is something else.

Tom doesn’t know the gravity of what he’s doing to the waiting until he meets the Hive.

That day, Tom wakes up to _something_ in his apartment. The half-daylight of dawn filters soft light into his room, sleepy blues chased down by new-born pink. There is _something_ in his apartment, and it smells _putrid_.

“The others are scared of you.” Tom hears, and it sounds hollowed and echoed, it sounds like a million voices talking at once in unison. “I don’t see _why_ , you’re just one.”

Tom sits up on his bed and recoils in open disgust at the…the _thing_ at the end of his bed, it’s watching him, but he can’t tell where its face begins. Whatever human features on it is long gone and dead, chunks of flesh in open rot and spewing pus with a dense swarm of flies hovering over it. What little skin there is, is pockmarked with holes, some hollow, some crawling with silver maggots. This…this thing is dripping with it, maggots, flies, _worms_.

It regards Tom with one eye, the other eye socket is hollow and it looks into a skull that has open holes dug into it, crawling with more larvae. The remaining eye is swarmed with bugs, eating it away.

The waiting in Tom recognises what this thing is, to an extent. They are not quite the same, but they are similar.

“Why are you here?” Tom asks, trying not to gag at the smell. The flies buzz noisily. Tom flings the blanket over her in disgust. “You’re dripping maggots all over my apartment.”

He moves to get out of bed and he realises that his floor is just worms, layers and layers of it crawling over one another, and Tom sighs. He steps anyway. _Squish_.

The thing makes a noise, Tom doesn’t bother trying to interpret it, he moves around his apartment, assessing the damage, and he sighs. It would be faster to burn it all down, no doubt the worms this thing is carrying has already burrowed itself into the foundations of the building. Tom has a brief moment where he imagines the neighbours turning on their taps, only to find it spewing black sludge.

“You are dying,” the thing says gleefully. “The Hive likes it.”

Tom pauses. Huh. The thing has managed to shed the blanket Tom threw over it and Tom finally gets a good look on it. It may have once been female, Tom thinks, but there’s a formlessness to its silhouette, from the writhing and burrowing of the Hive she is hosting within her – the Hive that she is. She is decaying, Tom realises, as he studies it. She is rotting and the Hive is eating it.

The Hive likes it.

He has a lot of thoughts at once, as he stares at the Hive that once was a woman, but it rests like a scratch in the back of his mind. The waiting watches it too, and Tom can tell the waiting is not sure whether to hate her or not. Has not yet decided whether she is relevant.

She isn’t, Tom thinks. The Hive, this decaying of flesh that the Hive, half rot and half buzzing entropy – she doesn’t matter.

Not to them. “You said the others, who are the others?” Tom asks.

The Hive moves in a dismissive gesture, shakes off some worms to reveal dead sallow skin wrapped around bones, there is a writhing under her skin, where the worms are still learning to eat its way around tough flesh and emerge into light. “Maybe you’ll die today,” the Hive hums eagerly. “And you would never need to bother with it.

“The Hive, the Hive has never smelled something this nice,” the Hive grins, and a mouthful of maggots drip between her teeth. “If you die, the Hive wants you, the Hive would like to be in you. Hmm, wouldn’t that be nice? That would be very nice.”

Similar, but not the same.

Tom grins back. “Or maybe I would be in the Hive. I do not think I shall make it nice.”

The waiting says, _Oh?_

The Hive trembles, a violent angry motion that has the bugs clouding it rise in formation. The Hive bristles, and Tom laughs. “I am going to leave,” Tom tells the Hive. “And you shall not follow me. Tell your god that they can share this meal, but only _this_ one.”

The Hive is _vibrating_ in anger. “You cannot stop –”

“No, I cannot,” Tom admits. “But I only need to stop _you_.”

Tom leaves, and he tells his neighbours that he cannot stay because there is an infestation in his apartment.

What happens next is slow, but the waiting can be patient. It starts when the children get sick, something in the water, apparently. And then they start dying.

The waiting is fed in small chunks, slowly, surely.

There isn’t a surety to what happens next, but Tom can taste it from the news, from what information he can glean. There is a rumour that the sick and the dying came from some kind of pollution in the water. A mismanagement of waste from the administration of the building.

Human neglect that leads to their own inevitable death.

The changes do not come all-at-once, it is slow. Some continue to stay in the building, and some move out. Those who move out are terrified of the insects that crawl out of their sinks, their taps. There are cockroaches and pests and non-human things _watching_ , _witnessing_. There is a curse on the tenants’ lips, even as the landlords do nothing.

Tom is positively giddy as the waiting feeds. He gives Harry a spare key to his new apartment, lets Harry throw him a housewarming party while his old apartment decays.

It takes a while, and then the building is empty. A husk of cement and steel, like the hollow sinew and bones of a world. The insects continue to live inside, _their_ world now.

Tom likes to pass by the empty building, not for the swell of pride in him as he sees what he has done – but for the sweet, sweet _fear_ in the nearby buildings. They see the empty shell of the building and think they will be next.

They murmur curses at the landlords, the government, one another, but no one will do anything – and they are paranoid for the signs that they will be next. If there will be signs at all. What if they wake up one morning and they see a stinkbug crawl out of their taps, open up the plumbing and find millions of wriggling larvae?

What if they wake up in the dark of night and find some nocturnal creature that eats death staring back at them with beady eyes?

What happens next? What happens next?

If all these insectoids can eat a building and everything in it in a month – and nothing can stop them, then where to next?

Tom wants to giggle at the blame game that happens, everyone always wants someone else to be responsible.

Tom has a hypothesis. The Hive is a metaphor, and the fact it was drawn to him was telling about a lot of things. He has a theory about what the waiting in him is, and how to feed it.

America has four thousand, eight hundred and four nuclear warheads, spread out across three neighbouring states: Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota. The next time Buzzfeed crosses the pond and they were within driving distances of the nuclear silos, Tom takes Harry to it.

“We’re not supposed to be here, are we?” Harry asks, eyeing the handwritten danger sign his flashlight is aimed at.

“No, we are not,” Tom agrees as he removes the crowbar propping the door open. “But well, it’s not really a B&E if everything was already broken before we got here, is it?”

Harry aims the flashlight at Tom, and Tom can physically see the _THIS IS WRONG_ warring it out with the _I WANT TO KNOW_ on his face, eventually Harry sighs. “Put the crowbar down, I don’t like you holding it, given your dubious moral compass.”

“Why, Harry, are you going to be my accomplice?” Tom teases.

The silo is different from the haunted places they have been, there is no…no oppressive ring in their ears of something _other_ , everything here – miles and miles of concrete and steel – it’s all human. It’s near intent-less in how human it is. These are all manmade things, and if anything else appears with them without any explanation, it would be human too.

They arrive in the control room (“it’s locked – come on let’s go, Tom” “No, it isn’t locked. Look! I don’t even have to pick it open”) and Tom can see the surreal wonder on Harry’s face. “Is that a computer?” Harry aims his flashlight at a plastic box that takes up a quarter of the room. A room that’s all theatrical flips and switches and none of the smooth-silicon modernity that the youth would know.

There’s some kind of disgust in Harry’s voice and Tom huffs along with him. “I know.”

The waiting in him doesn’t have a noise for Tom or any instructions, but Tom knows that he doesn’t need to do much. When whatever Tom touches makes the machines hum to life and lights flicker on in the buttons, Harry screams.

“Tom – what the _fuck –_ ”

The fear in the room is thick and rich and the waiting shivers in Tom. _Like that, that one, just like that_.

Tom meets Harry’s wide, green eyes and presses another button. There’s a rumble somewhere in the facility, and Tom can see the moment Harry’s pupils dilate in fear. Harry throws himself at Tom to get him to stop, but that just makes them land bodily onto the switchboards.

“If we go out there and there’s a fucking nuclear warhead out there – I will kill you, Tom!” Harry hisses hysterically. “If we walk out of this nuclear facility and there’s a fucking wasteland out there, I will murder you – and then radiation is going to bring you back like some of kind fucking freak, and I will kill you again.”

The waiting purrs and purrs and purrs – it doesn’t need complete destruction, no. It needs this, _this_. Open, hysterical fear.

And a very specific kind of fear.

Right now, Tom wants to burrow inside of Harry. He is _delicious_. Tom laughs and laughs as Harry swears at him while alarms go off around them and lights flash.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author does not condone breaking into the ill-defended nuclear silos of the world to create general mayhem.  
> That said, the information about nuclear silos was from an infotainment episode aired in 2014, the information may be outdated.   
> I repeat:   
> Author does not condone breaking into the ill-defended nuclear silos of the world to create general mayhem.


	3. Matthew 5:8

Blessed are the pure of in Heart, for they shall see the face of God

_The Vast_

“Gentlemen, you are not supposed to be here,” a voice says at the door and Harry turns, launches himself at the voice and swings the crowbar he was holding, much to Tom’s surprise and delight.

The figure’s head bounces off of the crowbar and Harry drops it in shock as a sickening crunch emits from the man’s head. Tom spies spirals of pale branches across one side of his neck. And there is a recognition in Tom when the figure staggers, bleeding, but stands, blinking disoriented pale eyes at them both.

_Oh_ , Tom thinks. _He’s like me_.

“My name is Mike Crew,” the man says, he runs his tongue over his lips and blinks some more. He frowns at Harry, as he fusses over the man with apologies. “I’m fine. You need to leave.”

“Of course,” Tom answers. The waiting in him is trembling, half-fear, half-anticipation. “We are just leaving.” He grabs a shaking Harry and leads him out, as he passes Mike Crew, he gets a sharp whiff of ozone.

Mike Crew grabs him by the arm, and there is a sharp tinge of static shock, and Tom winces, but waits for Mike Crew to let go. Tom is in power here. _Here_ , in a nuclear silo several meters under the ground, this is Tom in his element, soaked full of Harry’s fear.

Mike Crew raises an eyebrow, but lets him go. When they emerge once again to the world, Tom is almost disappointed that the world isn’t new and in broken eggshells and ashes. Harry sinks to his knees in palpable relief, and shakes so hard he sobs.

Tom buries Harry into him, and holds him throughout the tremors. “It’s over now,” Tom whispers. “You’re okay.” And he can feel Harry sag into him in relief and he wants to keep Harry there, just like that. Half trembling-fear and all stale-hope. Tom cuddles Harry closer and let’s Harry breathe his fill of him.

“Did I – Did I just try to kill an American Air Force Officer? In a nuclear silo we just broke into?” Harry asks shakily

“There are a lot of inaccuracies in that statement.” Tom answers, “but I suppose the shortest answer is yes.”

“Oh,” Harry chortles, and Tom can feel the half-laughter trembling in Harry’s ribs and presses a smile into his skin. “Let’s get out of here before we get arrested.”

Tom slings an arm around Harry’s shoulder as they walk. When they board the plane back to London, Tom realises that the sky – the sky is so, so _blue_.

And there is an old man clinging to the side of the plane and grinning at Tom from the window.

Tom snaps the window shut.

And snaps the nearest windows shut as well, just for good measures, some passengers glared at him, but Tom ignores them. Harry shuffles beside him and lifts his sleep mask a little, “Tom?” he asks sleepily, glassy green eyes stare at him, unfocused.

Tom softens for him and gently nudges Harry against his shoulder. “Go to sleep.”

The waiting in Tom is confused, but Harry is Tom’s, and everything else doesn’t matter.

They arrive back in London in time for dinner, they eat, and they part ways. Some part of Tom is worried that Harry might bring whatever it was down in the silos back with him, but Tom knows that the only thing down there was him. Just him.

Tom heads to his new apartment, and opens the window and waits. 

“Ah thank you,” says the old man who had been clinging to the side of the plane during their flight. “Given what happened to Mike down in America and what happened at the plane, I wasn’t sure if you would let me in.”

Tom studies the old man, the waiting in him recognises the old man as _same_. _He’s like me._ But _Tom_ thinks this old man should not be seen anywhere in public. The old man is tousled hair and varnished-wood cane that he doesn’t really need. He wears a ratty button-up shirt, and weather-beaten trousers. He looks like he skydived without a parachute onto a trash heap and just rolled out of it to do it all again.

“Simon Fairchild,” the old man holds out his hand to Tom with a smile.

“Tom Riddle,” Tom smiles back but doesn’t take the old man’s hand, he scoffs and moves, but Tom immediately moves back to put distance between them.

“Oh, don’t be like that,” Fairchild says. “What’s wrong? I thought a young thing like you would welcome some advice from your elders.”

“Is that what you’re here for? To answer my questions?” Tom asks.

“If that’s what you want me to do, I can,” Fairchild answers pleasantly. “I have to admit, I was curious about you. Young, new-born thing. I must say, none of us expected you to survive for so long. And the Corruption had been talking about how you were going to die soon. Oh but, you have been alive for a while, haven’t you? And you’re feeding your god well too!”

“My…god?” Tom wonders.

“Poor thing,” Fairchild coos and Tom bristles a little. “Born out of a Ritual to be the Messiah of a Power you don’t even know! Your parents must have died in it, and everyone else involved – and no one to explain anything to you. Poor thing.”

Fairchild tilts his head as he considers Tom. “You are the avatar of the Extinction. Whatever Ritual that birthed you must have wiped your parents and whatever little existentially depressing cult that ran the Ritual and you were delivered to the Spiral in Hill Top Road. No one expected you to survive there, and the plan, I heard, was to bind you to the Web Table if you _did_ survive,” Fairchild sighs, put-off. “But well, here you are. I heard that little incident in Hill Top Road fed you too.”

Tom wants to sit down. So that’s the name to the waiting in him, the Extinction. Some kind of…god, entity, _thing_. The rug…the table...Tom swallows down comprehension that he is not sure he wanted. The Corruption, that was what the Hive was, or an extension of the Hive. Here, where Simon Fairchild stands, _like him_ – they have a god in them, they exist still because of that.

“Am I,” Tom mutters, when he looks Fairchild in the eye again, the old man is leaning forward eagerly to hear what he has to say. “What are the others? Why do they want me dead?”

“Well, they believe you would upset the precious balance that everyone else has an _awful_ lot invested in,” Fairchild drawls. “But well, I believe there’s a bigger picture here. After all, you’re just a baby. What’s a little Armageddon and apocalypses between us fear entities, eh? It’s practically mother’s milk to us.”

Fairchild chuckles a little before he continues. “Ah, but you’re a smart one,” Fairchild grins at Tom. “Took a big bite out of the Corruption, didn’t you?”

“You say feed,” Tom points out. “When does the feeding stop?”

“Hmm,” Fairchild hums. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said feed, Maybe I should have said _consume_. Think of it like that – anything that knows _want,_ knows fear. What is in you and I is that fear. _They_ explain it better, since they actually experience this, but the consumption…well…

“You can tell, can’t you? It is hungry, yours more than most. You’re growing. It is so very hungry. When the fear of the end of this world feeds it – and this world ends because of it – it is fuel enough to wait, because there will be a world after all that to eat. Do you understand?”

Fairchild tosses his head back. “Maybe not this planet, maybe I’ll see you again in some other planet with a different sky. Maybe I’ll see you again when the Dark eats us all and the universe runs out of Eyes to be afraid. But we – ah, we will eat galaxies and star systems whole. It is not about being filled, it about _eating._ ”

“Being afraid,” Tom realises. “ _Them_ being afraid.” He slowly sinks down to the nearest surface, clutching it for some sense of stability.

Fairchild beams at it. “I like you! So very smart,” Fairchild purrs. “What you did at the silo was very tasty, I’m sure – but it gave all us quite a scare. I’m sure Peter is somewhere losing money in another wager.”

“Am I going to be killed? Are the others going to try to kill me?” Tom demands, alarmed.

“Why? You’ve got anything to lose?” Fairchild scoffs. “You live in London, these are Beholding grounds. Their lot have a tendency to be quite vicious.”

Tom blinks, and something in him strains, whatever hungry god in him agrees with Fairchild, but the minimal bit of humanity in Tom _stretches_ to be known. _Harry_ , Tom thinks. Bright green eyes and his glasses and the way he is comforted by Tom’s touch and touches Tom back. _Harry_.

“We’re not human, are we?” Tom asks quietly.

“Are we –” Fairchild snorts out in laughter. “Of course, we are human! As human as anything that can feel fear! We are humans,” Fairchild grins, and there’s something not-right with the old man. The red of his eyes from blood vessels ruptured during the flight, maybe. “We are humans, Tom. Just with extra parts.”

Tom stares quietly down, trying to sink into the solidness of whatever he was holding – a desk, yes, he’s been leaning against a desk as they talked by the window. “I think,” Tom decides. “This has been very educational, thank you.”

Fairchild beams. “No, thank _you_! I’m glad we got to have this little chat.”

Fairchild moves closer, holding out his hand again. Tom can smell him, like he could smell Mike Crews. Like petrichor, and…floral-scented air freshener? Tom doesn’t take his hand, and Fairchild huffs in disappointment.

“Hmm, I’ll throw you off someplace high yet,” Fairchild schemes playfully.

“Do that, and I’ll collapse every single skyscraper in Britain, people will _long_ for the sky before they fear it,” Tom threatens quietly. Fairchild hums, smirking back with bared teeth. “ _I like you_.”

The Hive had said that too. Fairchild leaves by throwing himself out the window.

The news next day mentions that a break-in happened in a nuclear silo in Montana, USA. Several warheads were launched, of the five launched, only one made it to the ground and was found. Though it did not detonate, it caused quite a ruckus.

_Are you fed_? Tom wants to grab his god by the shoulders and demand an answer. _Are you fed? Will you be satisfied?_

The sound that answers back sounded suspiciously like Fairchild laughing, _we will eat galaxies and star systems whole._

He stares at his tea, and the news rattles on in the background.

Tom doesn’t want to turn in to work, today. He wants to sit there in his apartment, drink tea and read a book, maybe. Harry will come over, concerned, and maybe he can coax Harry into staying a bit longer. Maybe same time tomorrow, he would wake up and see Harry first thing in the morning, and he would be what Harry sees in the morning too.

“‘Is it not worthy of tears? That when the number of worlds is infinite, we have not yet become lords of a single one?’” Tom murmurs absently and finishes his tea, packs his bag and goes to work.


	4. Matthew 5:10

Blessed are they which are persecuted for Righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven

_The Lonely, The Web_

Tom has a list prepared for all the things he’s going to tell Harry. He has prepared several versions of everything necessary, has been ready for the moment that Harry finds out that he is _Other_ and is inevitably terrified of him.

He did not prepare for getting kidnapped.

To be honest, he expected an intervention of some kind from the other entities, especially how Fairchild had mentioned they are somewhat antagonised by his existence. It inconvenienced him still, that the intervention is happening _now_. Right _now,_ when he needs to talk to Harry.

Though, to be fair, Harry has been avoiding him for a while.

When Tom wakes up and he is not where he was when he went to sleep last night, the first thing he notices is the waiting in him – where his god is – humming in alarm and aggravation. Tom looks around and there is nothing. It is just oppressively empty and cold, formless fog in all directions. He hears things – people – but they sound distant, noises echoed upon no-walls.

Irritation burns with in him and hums alongside his god.

Tom hears them before he sees them. “Good morning, Mister Riddle.”

The voice had been sickeningly sultry, full of intent and insinuation. The man that spoke was younger, dressed in an immaculate bespoke suit. The man next to him by contrast, looked older – full grey beard and salt-and-pepper hair. He looked comfortable, formless in a large worn coat. The fog cradles the older man, filtering from the crevices of his being – his pockets, between his fingers. The god in him hums a pitch that resonates with the presence of other gods, and Tom fights to not bare his teeth at them.

“I would like to stop being accosted in bed when I wake up,” Tom says as politely as he can. “I don’t think it’s an unreasonable request, do you think you lot can uphold it? I have to go to work, I have a life outside of this.” _Harry, I need to get to Harry._

The men laugh, and Tom folds himself into a comfortable position and waits. It is so cold in all this empty space, Tom is not sure what else he expected. The Extinction crowds itself to the surface of his skin, all of its agitation substituting heat.

“I don’t think you understand, Mister Riddle,” the older man says, voice mild-mannered and sea-rough. There’s a tinge of an accent there, and the huff of laughter to cover up something else. “There is no other life other than _this_. Some of us are born into it, our families have been in _this_ for generations. You are born into _this_ , quite literally. You are not Agnes with a cult behind her to help kill her when she can no longer serve her purpose as messiah. There is just you.”

“Oh, is this going to be the long monologue about how you orchestrated all this?” Tom asks.

The younger man leers at Tom, and Tom’s god lashes out something violent and angry and unknowable as Tom feel an _itching_ settle over him. “The Flesh prepared the blood ritual in the forest – humans are so easy to scare. Dash a little blood, a little _gore,_ all over the place and then they run themselves ragged finding patterns and being afraid of those patterns. It didn’t scare me, but it wasn’t to scare _me_ , it was to scare Buzzfeed, so we would stay in.”

Tom is still talking and – how is he still talking. The younger man grins at Tom, too much teeth. “And when we stayed in, it was a simple matter of divide and conquer. Harry was always clear about how scared he was about the occult – and it’s so easy to scare someone with knowledge. A few whispers about the ‘devil’, and people get so very scared. And now, Harry is scared of _me_.”

Tom doesn’t realise he’s growling until the younger man chuckles with satisfaction, the Extinction wants to sink its teeth into the younger man. Eat him, eat him like they ate the Hive. The Extinction does not care for _knowing_ or being seen. Eat him, _eat him_. 

“We’re all the same kind of mad here,” Tom spreads his hands amicably to both of them. “I know what you both are, and I know what I am. No need to try and scare me, it’s embarrassing to all of us.”

The older one huffs a laugh at that, and the younger man continues to grin. Tom smirks. “Yes, I am just a baby avatar, and it’s very fun to bully the newcomer, but you lot have always been scared of me since I was born. You placed me in the orphanage and you thought I would not survive, and I did. You tried to bind me to the Web Table and all it did was feed me. You got scared when I pulled the stunt with the nuclear silo and with the Hive – and so you started your little plan. Very cute, and now here we are upon a darkling plain.”

The older man scowls and the younger one puts a hand on his shoulder. “Here we are. What do you think happens next, Mister Riddle?”

“If you kill me, I’ll just come back,” Tom lists out. “It would be easier to keep me as a potential ally than to kill me.” The Extinction is beating a migraine into the back of Tom’s eye, pure loathing acid in his blood.

“You’re the last of your god,” the older one reminds Tom. “There is no legacy after you, no one else to carry your god’s deliverance. You – you are human enough that if we kill you, we can delay the Extinction.”

Tom considers it. He might die, true, but he has an image in his mind of his god gathering every single piece of Tom and putting it together with itself and everything they have eaten before and making a new Whole. They can kill Tom, but he won’t stay dead.

“No, I don’t think so,” Tom dismisses it. “And if you did think so, you would have already done it.”

The younger one hums and nudges the older one. The older one gestures Tom closer and – he does something that the fog lifts a little, and the world around them comes back – though opaque and still cold, sound echoes oddly still. They are standing in central London, in the entrance of Buzzfeed’s office. Harry is walking into the building.

He looks healthy, though he has been taking his sick leave liberally. Tom had been giving him distance after his texts got ignored after a while, and he starts planning different courses of actions, a full list of speeches and diatribes.

Resentment builds-builds, threads itself heavy and dense in his marrow. He could have seen Harry today, could have talked to him. Tom wants Harry _now_ , as petulantly as a child being delayed gratification.

“Is this a threat – ” Tom bares his teeth, sneers.

“Ah,” the younger one hums, watching Tom with bright, bright eyes. Tom thinks he hasn’t blinked in a while. _Knows_. Tom knows this man hasn’t blinked since Tom first laid eyes on him. The younger one is still making interested noises.

 _Some of us are born into it, our families have been in this for generations_. This isn’t about _Tom_ at all, this is about the god Tom harbours. The metaphysical leviathan in the pits of his being that eats fear and _keeps eating_.

“I am the last of my god,” Tom repeats, and feels sick to his stomach. He can call out to the Extinction right then and there, it coils around his bones protectively, because he is all it’s got. “But you’re not _sure_.”

The men stand and Tom grins with a bravado he doesn’t feel, but his god relishes in the fear-of-him in the air. “Oh, he is very smart,” the older man notes, a hint of disapproval in his voice.

Tom turns to look and he sees someone else on his desk, sees how his colleagues clap the other man on the shoulder and call him Tom with a familiarity that belies what Tom knows of them and how they interact with strangers. The Extinction looks, but without proximity it can’t be sure, it rumbles anyway, and Tom _knows_ , primal as fear and just as true.

 _Harry_ , Tom thinks, hopes. _Harry, please_. He hears the men hum behind him, but he doesn’t turn to look at them, instead he watches Harry. Harry glances at Tom’s desk, and there is clear disappointment on his face.

“Wait, what?” the older man snaps, confused. The younger man waves a dismissal. “Give it a minute.”

Harry stays at his desk, starts working with a pointed kind of fury that makes Tom want to laugh. _Oh, Harry._ He glances up every time he hears Tom’s name mentioned, and Tom…Tom aches a little.

“Huh,” the younger man realises. It’s when Harry insists that Not-Tom is in Tom’s desk. The older man is making confused noises, and Tom is not sure what the fuss is. “I’ve never actually witness it happen before,” the younger man murmurs, leaning closer in clinical interest. Tom wants to snap his neck.

“For context,” the older man huffs, clapping a hand on Tom’s shoulder (Tom shrugs it off immediately in disgust, the man smells like sea brine) and glaring at the younger man. “Not-Thems replace people, slot in there nice and snug. Oftentimes, people do notice Not-Thems. It’s always one person, and it’s always the person who resented the originals.”

Tom understands, and for the first time since he’s woken up in this lonely-cold fog place, he feels genuine amusement bubble in him, and he laughs anyway. The younger man looks annoyed, while the older man glares at him.

“You planned,” Tom chortles between laughs. “You planned so hard, and you forgot that? What? Did your all-seeing eye not think ahead?”

The younger man shrugs. “It seems we will all be here a little longer than planned. My name is Elias Bouchard. This is Peter Lukas.”

The older man scowls at being introduced against his will, but Tom grins bright and wide at them. “Tom Riddle.”

Both of them tut. “That’s a lie,” Elias sighs. “Try again.”

The Extinction hums, and Tom knows they are right. There is an older name clinging to his lips, the last he ever said it, there was a snake had been coiling around his shoulders and choking him, he had not known what he was. “It’s the name Harry knows,” Tom tells them.

Elias and Peter turn to one another and communicate entirely in stares, when they turn back to him, their expression was unreadable. “Then – ”

Whatever Peter was going to say was drowned out by Harry laughing hysterically. The smoke of their cigarettes drifting to bleed into the fog of Peter’s lonely-cold place. They’re talking.

And then they’re not talking.

Elias winces at Harry’s first blow, and Peter has turned to frown in pity at Tom, oh-but

Tom is fucking _gone_.

Harry is darling with the sweetest fear he’s ever tasted – Harry _knows_ him, _sees_ him, and Harry has decided that he is not afraid. Harry is _beautiful_ in his violence, radiant with his teeth-bared and wild. Harry has known so much fear, and Tom had been witness to it all, but here at the face of an imposter Harry is _fearless_. And it’s the loudest claim that the half-god parts of Tom can make. Harry’s fear is _his_. Harry hates him so much, is so hurt from Tom not-telling him (and he would have, if he wasn’t _kidnapped_ ) but he is still _Tom_ ’s.

“I’m in love with that man,” Tom mutters, awed and besotted. Elias looks at him like he’s lost his mind, and the pity on Peter’s face doubles. Tom blinks at them, and realises what he just said, and says it again. “I’m in love with Harry.”

Wonder blooms in him as quickly as it wilts when he realises he’s not _there_ , and why he’s not there with Harry.

He is the Avatar of the Extinction. He shall live as long as he permits, and that is going to be so damn long – he exists to usher the end of the known world and be afraid for it and

And he’s in love with Harry Potter.

He cups his face in his hands, and murmurs again “I’m in love with Harry”, and it’s a death sentence ripped out from him, a large part of him cleaved clean and gone from the rest of him.

He is not going to love another person like he loves Harry Potter. There will not be another person who reminds him that he is human like this. There will not be another person that reminds him he is more than what a god he did not choose or want demands of him.

One day –

One day, when all the world ends and a brave new world comes again before him to die, he’s not going to remember the colour of Harry’s eyes. He’s not going to remember how Harry laughs. He’s not going to remember his touch, the smell of him, the tremble of his voice. Because he is human-and-some-parts-more, but in this he is human, and his god cannot do anything about this, his god does not care.

And maybe, maybe the new world will have emeralds and chlorophyll to grow green, and he will look at life-that-he-will-end and _ache_ , and he won’t understand why. Tom will yearn for a time when he knew what being more than a Messiah to the end of the world is, and he will have an inkling, half a shadow of feeling, of what it was like – and that he is missing someone, but he wouldn’t know who or why.

“I am in love with Harry Potter,” Tom whispers into the fog. And Harry Potter is going to die.

The sob that chokes him rattles the hollows of his bones, the Extinction tucks into his marrow in confusion. Peter claps a large hand on his shoulder and Tom screams as he tosses it away.

“Leave me alone! That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Leave me ALONE!” Tom’s voice cracks and he hides his face again, choking back sobs. Peter come back anyway to put a hand on his shoulder, but he doesn’t say anything.

And Tom feels…so, so _lonely_.

Elias merely watches Tom with a detached sort of curiosity, and turns back to watch Harry. “Oh,” Elias says. Harry is…gathering footage in the archives, dumping hard drives into a box and folders of scripts and notes. “Hmm.”

“Not-Thems sometimes can’t replace digital records,” Peter explains and Tom looks to see Harry feign being ill in front of their boss. It’s a very dramatic act, but it seems convincing enough.

Elias and Peter get bored eventually, watching Harry flick through dozens of old, archived videos to find footage of Tom. Most of it is gone, the published, edited videos no longer have Tom in them anymore.

Tom has never seen Harry this focussed, and determined, and he thinks of all the other times he has to drag Harry away from his desktop for food and refreshments. Harry whines when Tom breaks his concentration, but he follows Tom out for food anyway.

“Hmm,” Elias hums, almost disappointed as Harry stays in exactly the same position he has for two hours. He nudges Peter with his foot. “Let’s make a bet.”

“Oh?”

“Harry Potter figures out what this one is,” Elias jerks a thumb at Tom. “He talks to the Not-Them and doesn’t do anything.”

Tom almost rolls his eyes, but he’s not entirely sure. He doesn’t know enough but everything else to challenge that statement. All he knows is Harry – but

It breaks his heart to even think about it, but Peter had said that Not-Thems are only recognised by people who resent them. Harry despises him now, that much Tom knows – can glean from how Harry brutalised the Not-Them.

“Hmm,” Peter considers. “What makes you say that?”

“Not-Them glitches are common and are well-known, they right themselves after a while. Harry will go to bed, and when he wakes up, he will still hate that one, but I don’t think he would do anything,” Elias tilts his head. “What he’s doing now is just…confirming it. Confirming that the Tom Riddle he knew is completely gone.”

Peter looks at Elias oddly, but he doesn’t say anything.

“It’s like after a divorce, there is a period of time when you systematically go through every single record of that relationship and thoroughly destroy all of it so that you have nothing left as a reminder,” Elias elaborates. The odd look on Peter’s face just intensifies.

“Right,” Peter nods slowly. “Oddly specific,” Tom points out.

“Yes, very,” Peter agrees, and Elias fumes. “Why do _you_ think he will do anything else?”

“The boy has proven himself capable of throwing punches,” Peter points out. “Harry Potter will _act_ when he sees something he dislikes, he doesn’t sit around waiting for apologies that will never come or stew and theorise non-sensical things about why and how it happened.”

Elias opens his mouth, shuts it, narrows his eyes at Peter. Tom is not entirely sure what is going on between Peter and Elias at this point, but he knows he does not want to be in-between it, but he had to say it – “Harry’s job _is_ to theorise non-sensical things. The Buzzfeed Unsolved Network _is_ him overthinking in circles _._ ”

Peter glares at Tom, while Elias turns to him in consideration. Elias looks at Peter when he points at Tom, the god in Tom says to bite off that finger. “Character witness.” Peter huffs and Elias turns to Tom.

“Trade,” Tom says immediately. “I tell you what you want to know about Harry and you tell me what I want to know.”

“Or, I make you tell me anyway.”

The Extinction knows how the compulsion of the Beholding feels now and _eats_ it when it settles onto Tom. They are not complementary Powers, no amount of knowing matters when the world ends and _nothing_ will exist to know. Tom blinks blankly at Elias when nothing happens and Elias’ eyes visibly _glow_ with effort.

Peter laughs.

“Fine,” Elias spits. “Trade.”

“Tell me about here, this place,” Tom says. Elias turns to Peter, the latter makes a face, but agrees. “Harry Potter will figure out the rough gist of what I am, he will figure out the rough gist of what the Not-Them is. His job is to overthink, he will figure it out. And sometimes his own mind is his worst enemy.”

“So, what will he do next?” Peter demands and Tom raises an eyebrow. Elias sighs, turns away to groan in frustration.

“We’re in the Lonely,” Peter starts. “It’s my domain here. I think you would understand it as a separate dimension. Everywhere and nowhere at once.”

Tom considers it. “How do you move it relative to the world that everyone else exists in?” Peter raises an eyebrow back at him. Touché.

“To be honest, I’m not sure what Harry will do next,” Tom admits. “You see, I did not get a chance to talk to him immediately after he found out, on account of being kidnapped. I can deduce the simple things – he is upset, he is hurt, he is resentful. I am not sure what he will do next. What are you going to do when Harry figures out everything?”

“I don’t know the exact mechanics of it,” Peter shrugs. “I just do it. This has been my family’s domain for generations, we inherit it like any other heirloom. Is Harry Potter in love with you?”

“I don’t know.”

“If Harry Potter figures out everything,” Elias pitches in. “The Dark gets him. No matter what he does, the Dark gets him. The difference is just, if he does go and confront the Not-Them again, maybe the Stranger will get him instead and they will have to share. Bet? No bet?”

Peter grumbles, but gives Elias his hand to shake for the wager. Elias turns to watch Harry for a moment, who has not moved, and turns back to Tom.

The Extinction is going to dig out his eyes and swallow them whole when it gets the chance.

“What did you do to the Hive?” Elias asks. Tom turns to Peter. “Most of you are just making it up as you go along, aren’t you?” Peter laughs at that and Elias glares, he grins at Peter.

“Yes,” Peter confirms. “But maybe don’t tell the Beholding types that, it annoys them.”

Tom grins back at Peter before turning to Elias. “I’m told the Hive came to me because it sensed I was dying and wanted to eat me. I ate it first. How long have any of you been human?”

“I was born and all that, aged properly and normally,” Peter shrugs. “That one hops between bodies, this one is his fifth, I think.” Elias rolls his eyes at Peter. 

“You kept Jane Prentiss trapped in a Building,” Elias pointed out. “How did you do it?”

“You know,” Tom says. “I have no idea.”

Elias makes a noise of exasperation and Tom shares another grin with Peter. Here they are, a meeting of monsters loved by gods. Tom thinks hysterically that it’s six o’ clock now and wants to ask “is that the reason so many tea-things are put out here?”

“Lord Voldemort,” Harry whispers suddenly, and all of them jump. There’s a shiver down Tom’s spine, and the Extinction makes a noise like when Tom promises it’s going to be fed soon. _Oh_?

 _Say it again_ , Tom thinks. _Harry, my Harry, say it again._

Elias is staring at Harry in consideration again, and he looks at Peter. Peter huffs a breath and leans back. Tom watches as Peter pulls out a vape pod and inhales from it, exhaling fog.

_Oh?_

“Tom,” Elias calls. “I’ll give you this one for free. Why do you think it matters whether or not Harry knows about the Extinction?”

“Because you are an egomaniac and if the world is going to end it better be at the hands of your god?”

Peter chuckles at that, much to Elias’ chagrin. “Baby Avatar,” Elias chides. “You may have realised, none of is actually know much about our gods. We know that fear feeds them, we know that specific kinds of fear feeds them.

“We know that as with any other god, there is strength with numbers among believers. But have you considered _why_ there are such things as Avatars like you and I and Peter, here?”

“I’m sure you’re doing the rhetorical questions thing for suspense, but I don’t respect you enough on any level to treat it seriously.”

Elias bares his teeth at Tom in aggravation. “As any god wants, Avatars are here to bring them into this world. Give this world to the gods. For that, a Ritual is necessary. Not that nonsense thing in the forest that the Flesh did, but a proper Ritual.

“Our Powers have not laid down memos tacked onto a fridge for us to find out what the Rituals are, it is up to the intent and interpretation of the Avatar. Do you understand now?”

“You think if Harry finds out about the Extinction,” Tom realises. “And since the Extinction is still young, Harry can be the Avatar by just _knowing_ it exists – and carry the Ritual.”

“He’s moving,” Peter says. “I win.”

Harry is indeed moving. He’s bringing his phone with him and – and the spare key to Tom’s apartment where the Not-Them is. Tom turns to Peter, and he briefly notes Elias rolling his eyes at Peter as he steps back and Peter steps forward.

Tom lunges.

He throws himself at Peter quickly, and the shock of it catches Peter off-balance and Tom scrambles to find the vape pod in Peter’s pocket. Peter is screaming something foul at their contact and Tom darts away just as quickly with his prize.

Elias is shouting something as Tom brings the pod to his mouth and inhales a lungful of tasteless vapour, bringing just a little bit of the Lonely into him. The shock of _icy cold_ _sharp_ makes him gasp and drop the pod.

The Extinction catches the bit of Lonely in him curiously, and Tom grins around the mouthful of curling smoke. _They’re all just making this up as they go_. He grabs around the no-edge edge of the Lonely and _pulls_.

When Peter next tackles him, the two of them falls through termite-ridden wood beams and land hard onto old concrete floor. All of the air is forced out of Tom’s lungs at once and Elias and Peter are shouting in alarm.

The air smells musty with age and insects. All around them is the hollow skeleton of an apartment building that once was.

The Extinction stretches itself out, out, out, recognising the place as an old meal, and _grins_. The hollows of the air where no living things reside trembles, this is its domain – and two fellow gods stand before it defenceless.

“You can’t eat us, Tom,” Elias snarls. “We’re not Jane Prentiss.”

Fog is already beginning to filter out of Peter’s fingertips.

“No,” Tom agrees. “But I can delay you.”

Tom pulls the Extinction over his skin, and reaches _out_. The old wood and metal groan, eaten through and decayed. The building _shudders._ Elias is shouting something, eyes glowing, and the fog is growing denser and denser, pooling at their feet.

Gravity is faster.

The bones of the dead building _SNAP_ and the rumble of concrete falling drowns out what Elias was shouting, the fog dissipates in all that solid matter slamming down hard. Dust billows in an audible _roar_.

The last thing Tom hears is the Extinction, laughing and laughing and laughing. Its laughter sounds like the collapse of an abandoned building.

*

“ _Lord Voldemort_.” Murmured absently, like the slip of a tongue.

“ _Lord Voldemort._ ” More conviction, a clear image present.

“ _Lord Voldemort._ ” A prayer.

The Extinction goes where it is called and ironic glee pours through Its veins as it realises Its new Avatar has eyes green-like-life.


End file.
